It's amazing to me how people who manage channel operations for carriers (and likely have not worked in the channel as a partner in at least 8 years) can give partners advice about running their business. Have you looked inside your own company???

Reason 1 that some people need a slap is Larry Walsh on CPZ saying that partners need to spend money on R&D. Never mind that he doesn't explain what he means by R&D. How does he not understand that partners are sales distribution channels for carriers. The R&D should be coming from the carrier. Innovation and Telecom today means a new app to run on a smartphone.

G.fast, WebRTC, MIMO and the like come from the hardware (CPE) vendors for the most part. These are not embraced by the Duopoly, but by companies on the fringe of the telecom ecosystem (like Citrix, Dialogic, Vidtel).

Reason 2: Verizon's Schijns: Partners Need to Market Themselves Better. Partners need to market? Your shiny brand is being sullied by a lot of actions that fly in the face of the rules and laws (encryption blocking, Netflix scuffle, paid prioritization, FCC $1.25 mill fine, FCC $7 mill fine for privacy). Schijns, do you realize that marketing is more than telling people you sell stuff, right? Marketing is literally everything a company does, every aspect of it. It's actions define a company. So what are your actions saying about your company? A lot (and none of it good). VZ actions lately says VZ will do anything in the name of the almighty dollar even trample over our customers who provide that dollar. What partner would want to associate with that brand??

Your direct sales force for the past couple of months is quoting $3000 for 10GB circuits to my customers, while the quotes I get range from $8K to $18K for the same circuits. So either there is an internal quoting issue or your direct sales folks are misquoting or your are screwing me.

Now let's talk about quota, revenue numbers and $3K 10GB waves, shall we? How in the world do you think you can meet Wall Street expectations when you give away waves???? With all the pricing pressure on every aspect of telecom, it is disturbing how much sales activity is necessary to make the same income. Who would have time for R&D or marketing when you are scrambling every day just to get ink? Then you look at the numbers on those contracts and you realize you can't take a celebratory lap yet because you have to sell even more.

Look, channel heads are giving a lot of advice to the channel partners on what they have to do. How about you focus on what your own company has to do?